wicker

I’ll throw mine in the ring: http://jennerhanni.net

I started out on Jekyll on Github Pages because I needed a place to put photos and I don’t use Facebook, Flickr, Google Plus, etc. It’s super simple, serving the photos on Smugmug for a yearly fee, and it works just fine for friends and family when I send a direct link. It feels manageable in a way that social media (for me) often doesn’t.

I’m moving from hardware to software and it’s been a struggle to organize my resume and portfolio. I’m pleased with how it looks now with the sorting by category.

And, of course, I had to go and get a writing hobby where nobody wants you to post anything online because they want first publishing rights. So I have a page where I guess I’ll just list things I’ve exhibited or published when I really want to post the poems or articles themselves. It’s the writing version of “but the client insists this remain closed source” when I just want to share and geek out about everything I make. :(

Looking at the list by company, it seems like the most valuable part of this project will be the data set you’re collecting for testing input validation.

Here's the PARTNER study, which found no HIV transmissions after nearly 900 sero-discordant couples had sex without condoms more than 58,000 times where the HIV-positive partner was using suppressive antiretroviral therapy.

Q&A: http://i-base.info/qa-on-the-partner-study/

Full study: http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2533066

I'd like a source for that, since my understanding was the opposite.[1]

Quoting from the abstract:

"In a randomized double-blind study (n = 127), science faculty from research-intensive universities rated the application materials of a student—who was randomly assigned either a male or female name—for a laboratory manager position. Faculty participants rated the male applicant as significantly more competent and hireable than the (identical) female applicant. These participants also selected a higher starting salary and offered more career mentoring to the male applicant. ... Mediation analyses indicated that the female student was less likely to be hired because she was viewed as less competent."

[1] http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.abstract

Do you do anything in particular to make use of the time during the commute besides just concentrating on driving, listening to music, or daydreaming? I struggle with long commutes since I inevitably feel like I'm wasting the time.

This is a service that's provided around here by my local hardware store, the local big box stores like Home Depot and Lowe's, and local specific equipment rental services. You can get indoor ladders from the local paint store.

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll do that! I posted partly in hopes that somebody would reply and solve problems I didn't know I had. That's the joy of being totally new to this stuff. I don't know what I don't know. :D

Re: using mains power lines... I actually have a friend who might be able to answer that, so I'll ask him. We were also considering transmission towers, since plenty of the hikes I know will take me across a clearcut for the transmission lines, and I can get some altitude with good, unobstructed views.

I'm really interested in this! I've basically strung together some text files but occasionally lose a couple of hours tinkering to see if there's a better way. What backend are you going for? If it's Linux-compatible I'd love to beta test for you when you're ready.

It's been a really fun break!

I'm getting interested in super low frequency signals so I looked up the E202 Very Low Frequency (<10kHz) receiver[1] and laid out/built a variation of it.[2] Right now the whole thing is a broadband receiver with no antenna (obviously) and the whole circuit board assembly is functionally acting like a microphone. I can hear when I touch any component or move my hand around in the air. I'm going to add a 60Hz notch file and then take it out to the middle of nowhere.

I think it would be awesome to go find a pipeline to use as an antenna...

Next project is to take my BlueROV[3] and build a hydrophone array[4] for it so a friend and I can see if a underwater acoustics engineer friend and I can use it to track other objects (like a remote-controlled toy boat) in the water. I've been doing some Kivy visualization of an accelerometer and gyro (MPU9255) and I think we could use matplotlib's interactive mode or something in Kivy (maybe) to visualize it all in realtime.

There's nothing cutting edge here but I've done a bunch of radio frequency (RF) stuff like GPS and WiFi and I'm really enjoying how tangible audio seems in comparison. Just having fun with low frequencies, basically.

[1] http://www.vlf.it/romero2/explorer-e202.html

[2] https://github.com/wicker/e202var-natural-radio-receiver

[3] https://www.bluerobotics.com/store/rov/bluerov-r1/

[4] http://www.dosits.org/files/dosits/hydrophone_instruc_w_imag...

I'm curious if they're including caffeine in that number.

We do! They're way behind Eagle and KiCad, but they're a fair and growing number. Our current challenge is to keep expanding our ability to automatically detect the default gerber naming scheme so it doesn't matter which CAD package you're using. I know we've recently really nailed down the Altium variants (Designer, CircuitMaker) but I'm less sure about Upverter.

One of the downsides of accepting gerber files is that a lot of folks rename to match our suggested naming pattern to be sure the files work, so it can be tough to determine which CAD package was originally used. Plus, we still get gerbers from some rare ones like TraxMaker 2000 or Ranger 3.

I completely agree, and I also wish I would have switched sooner.

The only thing I'd add is that anybody who's thinking of switching should treat it like picking up a new, very different programming language. It took me three weeks with several boards and a video tutorial series to finally get comfortable that I can use the tool without constantly looking up hotkeys and documentation (which is really good).

The thing I recommend is to never assume that the way KiCad is doing something is the only way, and to Google aggressively. A good example is the 'Move' tool vs the 'Grab' tool. I watched a guy nearly swear off KiCad because he only used Move and never Grab, so he was moving wire segments individually. If he'd read the documentation or searched for the answer, it would have been there. These tools are not particularly intuitive.

The best part of taking some dedicated time is that now I have 2-layer and 4-layer templates with my design rules, custom project settings, and a bunch of custom hotkeys. It makes all the difference.

I'm on support at OSH Park and we're still seeing a sizable majority of Eagle boards, but KiCad is definitely on the rise. I've got the impression that a lot of folks have been turned off by having to get the daily builds, so I'm incredibly excited to see the stable release. I'm expecting we'll see KiCad come to parity with Eagle over the next year or two.

We're also working on being able to take .kicad_pcb files directly, in the same way we take Eagle .brd files now. In the meantime, I wrote up a page with some KiCad screenshots and instructions for how to generate the gerbers and drill files we need. [1]

The major issues we see can be solved by checking the Protel naming format option so we can detect layers correctly, and by putting the board outline by itself on the Edge Cuts layer.

[1] http://docs.oshpark.com/design-tools/kicad/

Just ignore me if you were joking, but do I have a serious question about exactly this. I've considered doing something like this for myself. Not an app, but I thought I might wrap my credit card in a bit of cardboard that says "Wait! Think! What are you doing?" as a speed bump against my compulsive spending.

Does this actually work for you? Do you open the app and it says "Don't drink, fuckface." and you're like "oh, right, OK. I won't." Or do you just blow right past it? I used to work in a shop with gruesome safety posters on the wall at work but after a couple of weeks, I stopped noticing them. I figure this would turn out to be something like that.

On the front page, it says "The content presented here is suitable for self-study by those wishing to learn Python for astronomy or other scientific research applications."

Right below that, it says "The workshop material here was presented in the Spring of 2011 at the Harvard / Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. A range of about 25 to 50 people participated in the different workshops, which were 1.5 hours in duration. Based on our experience a 2 hour slot would have been more reasonable to allow time for the exercises and discussion."

It sounds like this was a series of workshops that were presented, and the material collected and released as reference for anybody else who wants to take initiative in their own communities.

This brings up a good question, though. What are the reasonable expectations for people who make their reference materials online after they're done with the initial conference talk or workshop, and have moved on to something else?

I've just discovered Greg Egan, so I've read Diaspora, Quarantine, and I just finished Distress. I'm working on Axiomatic, which is a collection of his short stories. His characters are a little flat and his endings feel a little odd, but I love the worldbuilding and the ideas.

I'm having trouble finding other people who've read him and want to talk about his books, though.

... to have a positive impact on people's lives? To potentially go into research and contribute to the greater body of human knowledge about how our bodies and minds work? Did I miss an /s tag? For some people, and that includes a lot of people working in disruptive startups, there's more to life than just making a lot of money and living well on an individual level.

There's an alternate article at Boing Boing that has photos and appears to be more actively covering the ongoing story: http://boingboing.net/2015/04/01/explosion-oil-spill-and-fir...

I took a look at your previous submissions and I think you've already heard the advice I'd give. If you haven't already, I think it might be useful to contact your doctor and at least rule out the possibility of depression.

Depression isn't just an attitude, it's an actual chemical imbalance. It's something that happens to all kinds of people and investigating it might lead you to a fix. I've had periods where I've felt that lack of joy or interest and I wondered why I even bothered, but I got some help and now in retrospect I can tell it was terrible to live like that. At least talk to a doctor and bring up the possibility.

Tons of people around you struggle with the same thing even while they look so awesome and successful, especially if you're in the valley. I know it feels like you're totally alone but you're really not. At least investigate that your brain chemistry might be a little out of sorts.

I've heard (but don't have first-hand experience so I can't verify) that selling it on commission via a local store might be worth looking into.

Moshe makes a good suggestion. Small Gods is a favorite of mine and it stands alone well enough.

I looked and generally agree with that suggested reading order and I started with the Watch series. I'd pick one of those series, give the first book a shot, but if you hate it maybe give one of the other continuities a shot before you throw in the towel. I hated the Rincewind novels and it took me a while to come around to the Witches (now I love them) but I thought the Watch books (starting with Guards! Guards!) to be absolutely fantastic.

He's written a lot of books of varying quality over a lot of time so I always warn people to be prepared to give him a second chance.

I met him once when I was a teenager. He was really kind as well as insightful and funny.

I actually canceled a sizable ($1000) contribution early in a campaign. I got excited, pledged, and then talked to a buddy who actually has subject area knowledge in what the campaign was trying to do. He raised a bunch of good questions and I never got any good answers back from the campaign, so I didn't feel comfortable it wasn't vaporware and I withdrew the pledge. In retrospect, they were focused on the gee-whiz signed photo and coffee mug level prizes whereas I was interested in the actual end result hardware for science, and I think whomever was running the campaign just didn't communicate well.

I would feel very awkward waiting until the last minute and certainly if they were on the edge of the goal, but in that campaign's case I canceled in the first two weeks and they made their stretch goal anyway.

I'm a hardware engineer so I'm just incredibly suspicious when really cool hardware pitches can't answer follow-up questions with sufficient details. Lesson learned: I'm an impulse buyer so I'm not allowed to pledge money on Kickstarter without waiting twenty-four hours and talking to a subject matter expert.

I was having trouble with Leechblock until I realized I could redirect the page to something like a static image. I often find myself blinking and staring at a Leechblocked result without quite knowing how I got there, particularly from the middle of a flow state. (I'll be hacking on something and randomly open browser, ctrl+l, "reddit.com" without conscious thought.)

I change up the image every few days but I try to have it point to something like the recent Orion launch or a trip photo from the Portland Hikers Field Guide. Instead of redirecting to Google's homepage (which is what I did at first), seeing the image gives me positive reinforcement to pause and be more mindful about what I'm doing, where my head is at, etc.

It's been an enormous help in instilling my habit to stay focused.

I've been kicking around the idea of writing something but I'd like to do it under my real name and so I'm paralyzed by the fear that I'll write something terrible and get bad reviews and it'll show up on my search results forever. Maybe I'm more afraid it'll just languish once it's written. I don't know.

Can you talk a little more about the ebooks? How did you choose a topic and could you point at a useful reference or two for how to market?

I completely agree with this interpretation. I'm gay and I don't find it something to be proud of -- same as how I don't find my brown hair or blue eyes things to be particularly 'proud' of. Unfortunately, saying "I'm not ashamed to be gay" may be more accurate but it also feels like I'm agreeing to frame the conversation in terms of whether being gay is something to feel ashamed about. I don't even want that idea tied to it so, in the absence of other options, I'll err on the side of gay pride.

I didn't think it would matter to read this from Tim Cook but it turns out I feel very encouraged by his words. When he says "engineer" among his attributes, well, I'm also an engineer and it gives me a sense of possibility.

Not only not a lot of regret, but it really is a chilling comment for its implications. A single brigade-sized unit is something like 4,000 soldiers. So coming up with a multi-brigade-size unit could be twenty thousand veteran American contractors with, like you said, administration, special forces, covert intel ops, and all with recent combat experience.

The brazenness of Blackwater/Academi has always amazed me.

This is really cool. The other fruit fly project I was impressed by recently was Mihir Garimella's FlyBot: Mimicking Fruit Fly Response Patterns for Threat Evasion [1] which was a quadcopter that demonstrated evasive behavior. I really like looking at biomimicry implementations because there are so many levels on which to do it. Mimir was trying to mimic outwardly observable behavior while Neurokernel is trying to mimic neural pathways.

[1] https://www.googlesciencefair.com/projects/en/2014/6d1893c20...

How do you manage that?

I basically said, if I realize I'm bored then I take it as an indicator that there's a deeper problem with me and I should get some sunshine or take a walk. For me, the root of boredom is avoidant behavior.

What differentiates those people from the success stories? Misdirected effort? Too much on the lone wolf side of things so they never get feedback (and thus misdirect their effort)?

One of my great fears is putting in the study/time and getting no results.

I'm not convinced. I'm in an engineering area but if it's open plan then I'd still be able to see people, hear their (arguably more interesting than sales) conversations, and constantly have to split attention between monitoring the area around me and focusing on whatever problem I'm solving.

An engineer coming into my cube to chat a few minutes ago is what distracted me and now I'm frustrated and browsing HN. It's bad enough in high-walled cubicles; I don't know that I could maintain deep focus for meaningful amounts of time in an open plan.

I put a door on my cubicle recently and being able to mentally expand to fill my space while free from worrying about anybody else has done wonders for my productivity.